Oh Sly, has it really come to this? Having stretched credulity as Rocky Balboa returning to the ring as a 60-year-old, Stallone now wants to kid us he's still got the chops as a warrior, despite a bulk that would find a more appropriate setting on the golf course.

The smouldering gaze, the Neanderthal hang of the lower lip, the grunted dialogue, it could only be John Rambo, that Tarzan with a machine-gun who laid waste to Eighties action cinema.

Twenty years on, he's living reclusively in Thailand when a Christian aid worker persuades him to take her group into war-ravaged Burma. Once they're kidnapped by a brutal militia, Rambo casts aside any pretence of personal reform and snaps into action: "When you're pushed, killin's as easy as breathin'."

The killin' gets very nasty indeed, starting with scenes of repulsive torture and ending with the full nine yards of stabbing, beheading and bombing. This may win favour with 14-year-old boys taking a break from their X-box, but one still imagines them asking: "Who's the old guy?"